This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark. For 150 years, faithful Episcopalians have been serving God and God’s people here in northern New Jersey, and this year, we get to celebrate that. It’s not just simply that we’ll be looking back all year. We will be looking back because there’s quite a lot of history that we want to celebrate, but we’re also going to be looking at where we’re called to ministry right now and who we will be in ministry going forward.
It’s important to remember that as we celebrate, this is not a frozen moment in time, it’s a highly charged moment in time that propels us into a future that is calling our name as the Diocese of Newark. It’s not unusual right now to hear about the decline in Christianity in the United States, and especially in the mainline denominations, in those traditional denominations that we’re familiar with, like Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, and we have certainly felt it in our own church and in our own diocese. People don’t go to church as often. People very often handle their spiritual life on their own – don’t feel a need to be in a church, or they’ve been hurt badly by church and don’t want to go to a church anymore. Even our most regular attenders, years ago that would have attended church three to four times in a month, now attend church maybe once or twice a month – very committed to church and regular at church and active in their churches, but not quite there as often on Sundays. And so there is this sense of our shrinking, and that is a very real issue.
But here’s the greatest irony, and this is why I am ready to celebrate 150 years and say, “Okay, God, what is next?” The ministry that we face around us, the needs that we face around us, the opportunities to share God’s love and mercy and hope for the future around us, are monumental. They are expansive. They continue to grow. Now, if we spend our time thinking only about the past, about the past 150 years, if we spend our time being afraid about the present – “Well, what can we do? My one, my one little church, or me as one little person? I can’t make a difference. I can’t make this church grow.” If that is where our focus is, we will miss the most important thing. And the most important thing – and the reason that we will continue to be around and that the Episcopal Church will continue to serve in northern New Jersey – is because we are opening our eyes to what God has put before us.
Our goal is to follow Jesus Christ – that is the mission of our diocese. Not picked by me, but picked by the diocese, picked by 93 congregations, a camp and a convent that spent time thinking about what it is that’s important to us, and what is God calling us to do? God is calling us to follow Jesus Christ into bold acts of justice and peace and love. And there is a pressing need for justice and peace and love all over the world, and especially here in northern New Jersey.
So come out and celebrate with us at the camp. Come out to Convention and celebrate more. Go to the speaker series that will be happening in January. Make your way to the concert in May, and the service with the Presiding Bishop in May, or plan on going to the pilgrimage in Selma and in Montgomery, Alabama, as we look at civil rights – plan on celebrating all those things. And most importantly, know this church has a calling. You have a calling. God has need for us to continue to be the Episcopal Church in northern New Jersey, and we are celebrating our ability to follow God into that ministry.
